"Berlinn said that while she and others in MADD see policies in San Francisco as enabling users rather than contending with the root causes of addiction, they are well aware of the delicacy of treating mental health and addiction issues."

Sorry, what exactly are those root causes? The article doesn't really address that besides saying, "The drugs are available and the cops aren't allowed to arrest enough people."

I would argue that being a young person in a crumbling post-industrial nation who is able to recognize that (thanks to your parents' generation and the neoliberal political miasma that you've been enveloped in since birth) you have no future or purpose to speak of, and then the absolute lack of any tangible social safety net because our country's guiding ideology is bloodthirsty, self-serving, sociopathic competition is probably a good starting point. Do you think Tucker went into that, or did he just point out how there's poop on the streets of SF?

Anyway, just wanted to say that I really loved this profile of a woman whose family is being crushed by the gears of this cruel machine we call America is now helping push us further into authoritarianism.